Visiting researcher Dr Tjerk Timan delivered a seminar entitled 'Re-inventing privacy for the 21st century - why and how?' on Wednesday 15th February from 12 - 2pm. The seminar was well attended and there was a great discussion afterwards.  The slides from the seminar are here, and the paper on which it was based is here. Thanks to all who came along.

The abstract of Dr Timan's talk was as follows:

Due to novel ICTs, classical distinctions of spaces such as the home, the workplace, or public space are falling apart. One of the consequences of the blurring of such spaces is that core values in society are being influenced and modified by these new technologies: they are being challenged. One of the values I am interested in is privacy, be it in the home or in our streets. Not only socially the value of privacy is changing due to novel networks of information that are permeating almost all corners of life, also legally and regulatory, things are falling apart. Think for instance of the legal principle of “my home is my castle’ that is under threat due to technologies that allows to ‘look inside’, or the protection of personal data and belongings, that is under threat when phones are seized as an ‘accidental extra’ during an arrest.

Where the EU prides itself with being a forerunner when it comes to the regulation and protection of citizens’ data, there might be more at stake than only data, or ‘informational’ privacy in society. In a recent paper, we propose a new typology for privacy, in which we go beyond privacy as data protection only. In this talk, I will try to explain what we aim to do in this project, I will briefly highlight some cases and some theoretical lines of inquiry , to be ending up in a discussions that can take on many different directions. Guiding questions there can be: “is privacy still an adequate term when describing what is at stake?”, “what kinds of conceptual or regulatory solutions can be found to these problems” or “How and to what extend can we develop alternative paths of technology-development that is more privacy/ human-rights-friendly